Love, Jerry

ORAL HISTORY OF JERRY LOVE
Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt
Filmed by BBB Communications, LLC.
November 13, 2012
MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History. The date is November 13, 2012. I am Don Hunnicutt in the studio of BBB Communications, LLC., 170 Robertsville Road, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to take an oral history from Jerry Love, 713 Elk Mound Road, Knoxville, Tennessee, about living in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Jerry, please state your full name, place of birth, and date.
MR. LOVE: Jerry Love, born in Rogers, Arkansas, September 18, 1931.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall your father’s place of birth and date?
MR. LOVE: My father was born in southern Arkansas – Heber Springs, Arkansas. He was born around 1903.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was his name?
MR. LOVE: Jess Love.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about your mom’s place of birth and her maiden name?
MR. LOVE: Margaret Hain. She was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her family had just immigrated, and they had so many kids – her mother died when she was five, and her father put the children up for adoption. They put them on an orphan train out of Brooklyn, New York, that came down through the South, and came to Rogers, Arkansas, and the Elders adopted her. Her sister Marion was also adopted by another family, there in Rogers, Arkansas.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your father’s school history?
MR. LOVE: My father probably only went to about the fifth grade. He had to work to help support his sister and her kids.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what type of work he did?
MR. LOVE: Back then, he was working on a plantation down there in southern Arkansas. He was a mule skinner, I think. He took care of the mules.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mom?
MR. LOVE: Mother, after the family adopted her, they were fairly well off. She went to a business college.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did your father meet your mother?
MR. LOVE: There in Rogers, Arkansas.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were they married in Rogers?
MR. LOVE: Yeah. They were married there in Rogers, Arkansas.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you have any brothers and sisters?
MR. LOVE: I have one brother who is four years younger, Bill Love. He lives in Fort Myers, Florida.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about your schooling in Arkansas.
MR. LOVE: I went from the first, second, and third grade in Rogers. Then we moved to Paducah, Kentucky. I went through the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade at Paducah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your dress like when you went to school? What type of clothes did you wear?
MR. LOVE: I wore knickers with the socks, and I hated those things. You would start running, and the knickers would always fall down. But Mom always had me in knickers.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what type of classes you had when you were in school in Kentucky?
MR. LOVE: It was just regular grade school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Reading, writing, and arithmetic?
MR. LOVE: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How come your family came to Oak Ridge? What was the reason for that?
MR. LOVE: My dad was working there in Paducah, Kentucky, at the Kentucky Ordinance Works, which is now the atomic plant out there. The neighbor across the street from us was working with him, and they heard about a project starting in Tennessee. So in 1942, they came to get a job in Oak Ridge. They did, but they had to live in Knoxville. They rented some rooms in Knoxville, and they commuted back-and-forth. That was the fall of 1942. Then after school was out in 1942, then we came, Mother, and my brother and I.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you get to Oak Ridge?
MR. LOVE: Dad came home. He had a car, so he came home and got us. We packed what little bit of stuff we had, and came to Oak Ridge. There wasn’t any place to live here in Oak Ridge. They didn’t have all the trailers set up yet. So we lived in a little place down in Oliver Springs – an upstairs apartment. I guess we were there for about maybe two months in the spring of 1943. Then the friends that had come here with him found a motel there between Harriman and Wartburg called the Hilltop Motel. They had about six or seven cabins, so they just rented all of them and we filled all the cabins. We spent most of the summer there. And we finally got a trailer in section 10 down near Midtown across from where the high school is now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let me go back and maybe correct your dates. Maybe it was 1942 and 1943?
MR. LOVE: Yes, I’m sorry.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s quite all right. Now, you are living in a trailer camp, section 10. Where was that located?
MR. LOVE: Right across where the high school is now, just about three sections down from Midtown – west of Midtown.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was Midtown located?
MR. LOVE: Just about across the street from where Oak Ridge High School is now – across the [Oak Ridge] Turnpike.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of job did your father have?
MR. LOVE: He came here. He was a carpenter. All the guys that came with them were carpenters. His first job was with Stone-Webster. They were building the building that housed the calutrons.
MR. HUNNICUTT: At Y-12?
MR. LOVE: Y-12, yes. Mother got a job there, and she worked in the vault downstairs where they had the precious metals. They would lock her in in the morning and then let her out at night. She would sign precious metals out. They would sign for it, and she would hand it out through a window.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How old were you when you came to Oak Ridge?
MR. LOVE: I was 11 years old.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How old was your brother?
MR. LOVE: He was four years younger, so eight or nine.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Who took care of you guys while your parents were working?
MR. LOVE: We were latchkeys. We took care of ourselves.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they work shift work?
MR. LOVE: I don’t think so. No, I think it was all day work.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Both gone at the same time?
MR. LOVE: Yes. Both were gone at the same time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you ever recall your parents talking about their jobs or what they did?
MR. LOVE: No, I just remembered Dad said that they worked – he was in a building that had a big magnet. I think this was probably afterward, not while he was working there. But afterward he told us that that big magnet there, he said that when they walked into the building, their nail aprons would stand straight out that magnet was so strong. He said you could let a nail go and – bing – it would go straight to that magnet and just stand straight out.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mom? Did she ever talk about her work?
MR. LOVE: No, she just said that she was locked in downstairs in the vault where they had the precious metals. Most of the United States silver was down there. Of course, it was probably in that calutron. They had other precious metals down there. They used some for experimental work, I guess.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How long did your father work here in Oak Ridge?
MR. LOVE: He worked until I was going to UT [University of Tennessee]. I graduated in 1949 from Oak Ridge High School. It was probably right after 1949 that he left and move back to Paducah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you stayed behind?
MR. LOVE: I stayed here.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your brother? Did he stay?
MR. LOVE: He went with them to Paducah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother work that long as well?
MR. LOVE: I believe she did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The same job?
MR. LOVE: I’m not sure, but she had several. No, she didn’t have the same job. She worked different jobs, and I’m not sure what all they were.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did they get back and forth to work?
MR. LOVE: They had a car. They drove.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about living in the trailer at section 10.
MR. LOVE: When we first moved there, the trailers were just along the Turnpike; and the roads went into the trailer court and were perpendicular to the Turnpike. They ended at a ditch that they had dug, and the ditch was probably eight feet wide and about five or six feet deep to take care of a creek that ran down there – to take care of the drainage. That was our playground. We were latchkey kids, and so we would go down there and play in that creek all day long.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where were you going to school at that time?
MR. LOVE: When I first got here it was middle of the summer, we moved then from the trailer in the fall. We got a house at 111 Hamilton Circle. School didn’t start until late that first year. It was down where Robertsville Junior High School is now. They were finishing the building so we could get into school. I don’t think it started until about November that first year. I was there in the seventh grade at Robertsville.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Go back to the trailer and describe what it looked like inside.
MR. LOVE: I’ve seen pictures of them, but I don’t remember. The only thing I do remember is it didn’t have any water. It had a little thing there, but you had about a five gallon flat can that they would fill up and bring it in and sat up there, and you had a little bit of water that you could use out of that can. Push a button and you would get water into the sink. I think it’s just drained onto the ground into the gravel.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about restroom?
MR. LOVE: Of course they had the big bathhouse. It was built like an Army barracks type thing. All the things were along one wall and commodes on another, and around the next was a shower room with showers all along the wall. The most memorable thing for a little kid – at least for me – was going in there and taking a shower with all those hairy-backed men. I’ve never seen so many hairy-backed men.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How was the trailer heated?
MR. LOVE: That is a good one. I don’t really remember – probably oil. When we got on Hamilton Circle, they had the coal boxes. Up the wooden sidewalk was the big coal box they would come by and fill up.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That house on Hamilton Circle – what type of house was it?
MR. LOVE: TDU.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned about the coal boxes. Do you recall how often they were filled up or filling them up?
MR. LOVE: No, I don’t remember. They would just come by with the big truck and they would have a lid on the top, and they just filled the bins up. It had a little door at the bottom that you could open up and scoop it out and put it in the scuttle and take it down to the house.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you see different living in the TDU and then living in the trailer?
MR. LOVE: Well, we weren’t in the trailer really all that long – maybe a month or so. I don’t really recall a whole lot about the trailer. The main thing was that when we got the TDU, we had indoor plumbing. That was the main thing. We didn’t have to go to the bathhouse. The main thing about the bathhouse I remember was that it had a bulletin board. That was where everybody got their information. Mother, being a real religious person, went to the bulletin board and posted a notice that anybody that was a member of the Church of Christ call her number. She had a number at work where they could call her. So through that, several people got in touch with her. Of course, she posted them on all the bulletin boards in all the trailer courts down through there. Several people called her, and at the first meeting then – there were seven members of the Church of Christ that met in Grove Center in a little white church.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall where the church was located?
MR. LOVE: It’s about where the Oak Ridge Alliance Church is right now. They must’ve torn down the old building and built that new church there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Near the corner of Robertsville and the Turnpike there?
MR. LOVE: Yes
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s Robertsville and Raleigh Road.
MR. LOVE: It was right past there where that church is on the right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Back to the TDU, how many bedrooms were in there?
MR. LOVE: I think there were two.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you share a bedroom?
MR. LOVE: With my brother.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall having your mother wash clothes in those days?
MR. LOVE: Mother had a washing machine that she could roll over to the sink in the kitchen. We had clothes lines behind the house.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What school did you attend when you were living on Hamilton Circle?
MR. LOVE: The first year I went down to Robertsville. That was in the seventh grade. In the eighth grade, they had a new school open at the top of Highland Avenue and West Outer Drive, Highland View School.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let’s go back to the old Robertsville School. Was there anything unique about that school?
MR. LOVE: It was all brand-new with brand-new seats and everything. The new building part – of course, we used the old gym, the old Robertsville gym that was here before the war.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Had they torn down the old Robertsville School building itself?
MR. LOVE: No, it was still here then. I think there were a few classes in it. I didn’t have any there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember seeing any fire escape tubes on the outside of that old building?
MR. LOVE: No. I don’t.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now you are attending Highland View School. Did you walk to school?
MR. LOVE: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How far was that?
MR. LOVE: It’s probably maybe half a mile or so from Hamilton Circle, up Highland Avenue, up to West Outer Drive. It was about half a mile.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were some of the classes you had in Highland View School?
MR. LOVE: In Highland View, I was in the eighth grade. We just had a homeroom teacher, and we were all in that one room for all of our classes – arithmetic, English, spelling.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have gym class?
MR. LOVE: Yes, they had a nice gym. In fact, that gymnasium then – the Church of Christ met there on Sundays. They allowed the churches to meet in some of the gyms.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they have a playground outside for you to play on?
MR. LOVE: Yes, they did. They had a nice playground.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember your teacher’s name?
MR. LOVE: Ms. Henson.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me what you remember about going to school in Arkansas and then Oak Ridge – what the difference was at this point.
MR. LOVE: In Arkansas, of course I only went to the third grade. I remember the first two teachers – Miss Woods and Miss Price. They were old maids that had their hair in a bun. Then in third grade we got a beauty. She was a young teacher right out of college, and all the boys just fell in love with her. Her name was Carolyn Collins.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me what you did in the summertime when you lived on Hamilton Circle.
MR. LOVE: That was a boy’s dreamland up there on Hamilton Circle. We had the big fields down below us down there, where we went down and we could play football and stuff and that big field between Hamilton Circle and the high school. It was pretty flat so we would play football. The main thing was building tree houses. The woods right across from Hamilton Circle, right across Hillside Road. There were some big woods with a lot of the trees. They were building all those big apartments up there. There were all kinds of piles of lumber and kegs of nails, and all of us had a hammer. Our summers were spent building treehouses and hunting squirrels and rabbits.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What you recall about the swimming pool there below Hamilton Circle?
MR. LOVE: When we first got here, that was just kind of a lake that was kind of grown-up. We didn’t go from the trailer camp – I went over there a few times, but I didn’t spend much time down there. When I got up on Hamilton Circle, they had started cleaning it up. There was an old log cabin right next to the spring. The spring is on the west end of the lake. The cabin was right there next to the spring. We used that as a scout cabin. They started a scout troop. They actually started the scout troop – I was 11 when I came here, and I turned 12 in September of that year when I was still in the trailer court. I joined a troop that met there right next to Midtown. They had one of the hutments, they put it there. We kept our equipment, and that is where we met. Then we moved to Hamilton Circle, where I would have to walk from Hamilton Circle across the field where the high school is and over to Midtown for the scout meetings. Then they moved the scout meetings then down to that little log cabin on the lake where the swimming pool is.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the scout number?
MR. LOVE: No, I sure don’t.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Someone mentioned to me some time ago that that was called a fish camp, where the swimming pool is. Did you ever hear that name?
MR. LOVE: No, I didn’t.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But when it first became a swimming pool, describe what it looked like.
MR. LOVE: First, they came in and put sand on the Hamilton Circle side of the lake. They put sand in there and cleaned the lake out. You would go down there and swim and lay in the sand, and a lot of the men and women – they were in the military and living in dormitories. They would come down there and lay on the beach and swim. Of course, we would too. We would go down there and swim.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they charge you for getting in?
MR. LOVE: I think initially they didn’t, but then I think they did start charging. Then it was just another year or so when they finally started to go ahead and put in the concrete pool.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Wasn’t fenced in when you first started attending?
MR. LOVE: No, I don’t think so. They later fenced it in I think when they put the sand in. Then they started charging. They concreted the pool when they made the big pool that’s there now. They still use the water from that spring. We would go down to take swimming lessons, and they were always early in the morning. The water coming out of that spring was nice and cold, and we would all turn blue when we were down there taking swimming lessons. But that’s where we learned to swim.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned earlier about that field where the high school is – something happened in that field. Do you want to tell me again what it is?
MR. LOVE: Our house set up on the hill there on Hamilton Circle. We could see that entire field down there below us. It was full of rabbits. On Sunday afternoon, a lot of the men from all over across the trailer camp where all the hutments were and a lot of the bachelors stayed and workers – they would come down there and ring that field. It had drivers and they would start driving from one end to the other, and they had these big long sticks. They would kill the rabbits as they ran toward them. On Sunday afternoon, we would sit up there and watch them herd rabbits.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you move – or did you move from Hamilton Circle?
MR. LOVE: Yes, we moved from Hamilton Circle over to Woodland on Purdue Avenue.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the number?
MR. LOVE: No, I sure don’t.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was different about the house you lived in Woodland versus the one on Hamilton Circle?
MR. LOVE: Well, it was a concrete block house. It had a little bit more room. It was right on the corner – I forget the names of the road now, but we had a corner house that was very nice.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many bedrooms was it?
MR. LOVE: I think it was maybe a three-bedroom.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall how the house was heated?
MR. LOVE: No, I don’t. It may have been electric heating because I know we didn’t have any coal boxes outside.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you attend Woodland Elementary School?
MR. LOVE: No. By that time I was in high school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you get to the high school from Woodland?
MR. LOVE: Actually, to tell you the truth, I started in high school when we were still on Hamilton Circle. We moved to Woodland in 1950 after I graduated from high school in 1949.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were the houses and the roads finished when you move to Woodland?
MR. LOVE: Yes, Woodland was really a nice development. They had pretty well finished it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about your experience in the Oak Ridge High School. Where was a high school located when you attended?
MR. LOVE: It’s where Blankenship Field is now up on the hill.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s a pretty good piece from Woodland. Did you walk?
MR. LOVE: No, I was still on Hamilton Circle at the time when I first started there. So sometimes I would walk, but most of the time we would ride a bus.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about riding the bus.
MR. LOVE: We had those tokens where you would get so many tokens. I don’t know how much they were. We would get tokens and use the tokens to ride the bus to Jackson Square, and get off there at the little terminal route across from where a post office was. Then we would walk up the hill. A lot of the times we would just walk all the way home.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall some of the classes you took when you went to the high school?
MR. LOVE: I had geometry. I had Miss Benson for geometry class. Then our shop teacher – I took shop one year. He was also the coach of the rifle team. I can’t remember his name. He was coach of the rifle team, and I was president of the Rifle Club. He would take us out to Oak Ridge Sportsmans Club. They bought these good match heavy barrel single shot rifles, .22 target rifles – for the rifle club. They would take us out there as a group. There were probably eight or 10 people, and we would go out there and shoot.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were some of the other classes that you took?
MR. LOVE: I took of course English.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were you active in any of the sports in high school?
MR. LOVE: Just the Rifle Club mainly. I was mainly interested in outdoor sports. We didn’t start shooting archery – didn’t have any archery at that time. I started archery later.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I remember you telling me that earlier. Do you recall who the physical education teacher was at the high school?
MR. LOVE: Yes, Ben Martin. He was a dandy. He was a fine gentleman.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you like about him?
MR. LOVE: He was just the finest gentlemen. I was just a little scrawny thing. I’m hauling all this now, but I was just a little scrawny kid. I was good at doing chin-ups. I could climb the rope all the way to the top of the gym and back down without using my feet and everything, so I had good arm strength because I was so light. We had a competition – the pentathlon – against Knoxville High School. He chose me to do chin-ups. I went over there with a group. Some did push-ups and other things, jumps. I did the chin-ups for the team.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you win?
MR. LOVE: No, I came in second.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many chin-ups you recall you did?
MR. LOVE: I could do one more than anybody else. That’s what I always said. I could normally do 16 or 18 chin-ups.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever have a paper route when you’re growing up?
MR. LOVE: Yes, I did. I had a paper route when we live down there in the trailers. I delivered papers. They would come down to dump them off down there at Midtown. We would pick up our bundle, and my route was over there across the road in sections 21 or something, 22, and 23 – on the Oak Ridge High School side of the Turnpike.
MR. HUNNICUTT: More trailers?
MR. LOVE: Yeah, it was all trailers.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me what you remember about Midtown. You referred to it as a shopping center.
MR. LOVE: It was just a big old roof building. It had a little service station right there next to it. It had a little hutment there next to it that we uses for the scout cabin. That’s where I first started. Then I remembered the line where they would line up to get cigarettes. My dad smoked, but my mama didn’t, but she would get in line for him – stand in line to get him some cigarettes, too.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Jerry, did you ever play at the playgrounds during the summertime?
MR. LOVE: Yes. They had the best organized and the finest group of young people that volunteered to man those playgrounds. I have never seen anything like it before. They had playgrounds up at Highland View School. They had the one that was closest to us on Hamilton Circle. It was right about where the end of the high school is right now, the west end. There was a big tree, and they set up a group of people that would come there – young people. They had games for us to play, things to color, and books to read. They set up there every summer under that tree, we would go down there. That’s one of the things I remember about that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Back in the early days, there were boardwalks around town. Tell me what you remember about the boardwalks.
MR. LOVE: It was the best place to kill rabbits. The boardwalks were everywhere, up from my house, up to our coal box and then along the main streets. There were all these boardwalks. Of course meat was so scarce, we didn’t have a lot of meat back then. It was rationed. We loved rabbit and squirrels. We had a good tree dog, and he would tree squirrels; but he would also run the rabbits and run them underneath the boardwalks. Then he would run down the boardwalk and whenever he got over the rabbit, he would start sniffing, and we would go up there. We carried a long bladed hunting knife, and we would stick it down through the crack in the boardwalk and kill the rabbit – pull them out from underneath there and skin him and bring him home to eat. We had a lot of rabbit and squirrel that year.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have a bicycle when you were growing up?
MR. LOVE: I sure did. When I was on Hamilton Circle, I had a bicycle and we rode them everywhere. My main bunch of friends that I ran with in high school were near Cedar Hill School upon Outer Drive. So I would go up to meet my friend, W.S.
Everett, at the corner of West Outer Drive and Pennsylvania Avenue; and I would ride up the hill. We would ride out West Outer Drive to Cedar Hill School. That’s where we would play basketball and touch football in the season.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That was a pretty good ride from up the hill?
MR. LOVE: Yeah. But back then, there weren’t many cars. You would be scared to death to get out – you’d be scared in the car now, much less going up there on a bicycle. But we just didn’t have any traffic.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall where your mother did her shopping?
MR. LOVE: Most of the time I guess it was down at Midtown. And then when they built Grove Center, they were shops there in Grove Center. So when we were on Hamilton Circle, she would go down there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you go with her?
MR. LOVE: I was a never too much of a shopper. I don’t remember going with her shopping.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about movie theaters? Did you ever go to the theater?
MR. LOVE: At Grove Theater, yes. I sure did. Grove Theater came in down there here in Grove Center. So that’s where we went to the movie. Almost every weekend on Saturday we go to the movies.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember how much it cost?
MR. LOVE: I think it was probably about nine cents for a while, and then went up to 11 cents. I think that's about the price.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of movies did they show at the Grove Theater?
MR. LOVE: We saw all kinds of movies. The one that was most memorable to me was with Audie Murphy and Jane Russell in the “Outlaw”. It was the first movie that Jane Russell made.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about cartoons? Did they have cartoons on Saturday?
MR. LOVE: Yeah, normally they would have a cartoon movie and a cowboy movie.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was the Grove Theater the only one you attended?
MR. LOVE: No, there was one uptown in Jackson Square.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about that one?
MR. LOVE: I remember that we used to go up there – maybe that was before the Grove Theater opened. We would ride the bus up there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned that you got off the bus across from the post office in Jackson Square and walked up the hill to high school. Do you recall some of the other stores in Jackson Square? Did you stop at any of the other stores before or after school?
MR. LOVE: I remember there was a drugstore on the corner there up from the theater. I think there was a bowling alley down underneath on the other side of the theater. We went there sometimes and bowled a couple of times. But whenever they built the Grove Center, I worked down there setting pins the first week it was open.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do remember the name of that?
MR. LOVE: No, I don’t remember the name of it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It was the Oak Terrace.
MR. LOVE: They had a bowling alley, and several of us – you had to set the pins on pegs. They didn’t have the racks. When they first started – they even had one game they called ten pins or duck pins, they were where they had little pins. They threw a ball that didn’t have the holes in it. You had to set those little tin pins on those pegs. You would mash the lever on the floor, and the pins would come up. They had a hole in the bottom of the pins and they sat on those pegs. Then they would throw those balls, and they would come over the back of the backstop. They had a backstop, and you would get behind it and hide because sometimes those pins would come over. They stop the ten pins, but they still use those pegs for a while before they got the set machines then. They had the set machines and you would throw the big bowling pins in the rack, and you’d pull it down and it would and it set the hole 10 pins.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were setting the pins on the pegs, you push the lever and the pegs came up out of the floor?
MR. LOVE: Out of the floor. Yes. The lever was right on the edge. It dropped down. So you put the foot in there and mashed on the pins, and you set the pins on those pegs.
MR. HUNNICUTT: About what size was the bowling ball? About like cannonballs?
MR. LOVE: No, the bowling balls that they would use with the ten pin – were smaller. It was smaller than a bowling ball – I would say about half the size. Those guys could really hurl them. Then they started to use regular pins.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How much money did you make setting pins?
MR. LOVE: I think it was eight cents a line. If you could, there was a gap between two alleys so you could jump from one to the other. So if you are setting two lines, you could probably make a $1 or $1.50 a night setting pins.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the home milk deliveries?
MR. LOVE: No, I don’t remember that. I don’t remember us having milk delivered.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did I ask you before – did you have a paper route?
MR. LOVE: Yes, I did when I was in the trailer camp.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s right. Tell me how much papers cost in those days.
MR. LOVE: I don’t have any idea. That is so far gone.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do remember how much you made off your paper route?
MR. LOVE: I don’t. It was very minimal, just a little spending money.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember whether you had a personal ID badge?
MR. LOVE: Yes, I did. Everybody had to have a badge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was on the badge?
MR. LOVE: I think it had my picture and I don’t remember what else.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Maybe in ID number of some sort?
MR. LOVE: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the requirement on that badge? Did you have to wear it every time you went out of the house?
MR. LOVE: No, whenever you went out of the town. If you went outside of Oak Ridge through the gates, you had to have that to show and to get back in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your family have many people come and visit you while the city was gated?
MR. LOVE: No, none at all.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall times going out the gates and coming back in?
MR. LOVE: I think we went to Knoxville a couple times. Going to Sears Roebuck when it was over on Central Avenue – I think that was the big shopping spree of the year to get clothes for school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what transpired at the gate when you came back?
MR. LOVE: Mainly just look at your badge and checking you back in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I asked you about using the bus before, and you mentioned you rode to school the bus at times. Did you use the bus for other means of transportation around the city?
MR. LOVE: Yes, any time we wanted to go to uptown to Jackson Square, we would ride the bus. A lot of times we would just walk. But then we also used the bus to go fishing. They had a bus that left from the main terminal over on the Turnpike that went out to K-25, and we would ride that bus out to K-25 and get off at the Turnpike out there and walked down the railroad track to where the water came out from the cooling towers and fished in that stream.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And then catch the bus on the way back home?
MR. LOVE: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned to me one time about frog gigging. Tell me that story.
MR. LOVE: Past Robertsville School on Robertsville Road, just past Robertsville going west on Robertsville Road, on the same side as the school, there was a big swamp. There were a lot of frogs in it – bullfrogs. We decided that we were going to down there and go bullfrogs gigging. I made some gigs for me and my brother and a couple other kids that went with us. We went down there to go frog gigging. The mud was real deep, about half up to your calf in mud. My brother was behind me, and he gigged me in the back of my heel. Of course Mama didn’t want us going down there so I didn’t tell Mama anything about it. I got home at night and went to bed and woke up in the middle the night, and my leg was aching and I had to wake Mom up. I said, “Mama, Bill gigged me in the foot.” She said, “You were down there in the swamp, wasn’t you?” She looked and there was a red streak going up my leg. They didn’t take me to the doctor. She set me up there next to the sink and ran hot water in there, put Epson salts in there. I sat there with my foot in hot Epson salts, and the red streak finally went down my leg. They just didn’t take us to the doctor back in those days.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you go back to the swamp?
MR. LOVE: No, I didn’t go back anymore.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your family have a telephone?
MR. LOVE: When we got to – yes, we had one on Hamilton Circle.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were you on a party line?
MR. LOVE: Part of the time we were on a party line.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me how that party line worked.
MR. LOVE: Everybody could listen to everybody else. You had a certain ring, but what if it wasn’t your ring they could still pick up and listen.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you feel safe growing up in Oak Ridge?
MR. LOVE: I never had a worry in the world about anything in Oak Ridge. Back in those days even when I was in Arkansas or Paducah, we never lock the doors. We never thought anything about it. We would go to town when I lived in Paducah and walked maybe three miles to town and come back, and never think anything about it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about the people who were here in Oak Ridge? In all the neighborhoods you lived in, did everyone get along? How was that?
MR. LOVE: On Hamilton Circle, I had several young friends about my same age. We were the ones that hunted together and built the treehouses together. The people were just really, really nice. Of course I’ve always found people to be nice. I never met a really unfriendly person.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Even though they came from all different parts of the United States, they all blended together?
MR. LOVE: Yes. Our next door neighbors were from Michigan – Yankees. But we just love them, and they were great people. Of course most of our friends were members of the church. We were real church-oriented. So they were from all over, but everybody just blended in and we had a great bunch of friends.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned that the church met in Highland View School in the auditorium. Where did they meet after that?
MR. LOVE: They built the church down here next to the swimming pool, the Highland View Church of Christ.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall when they built the church?
MR. LOVE: No, I don’t remember. I think – I don’t remember what year they built that. I remember – did I talk about the church’s first meeting?
MR. HUNNICUTT: In the hutments?
MR. LOVE: No, in the little white building here in Grove Center.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes. And your mother had posted flyers on the bulletin board.
MR. LOVE: That’s where it kind of got started. Then they also started a Church of Christ over in Cedar Hill School. The group that met in that school finally established a church and built a building on New York Avenue. That’s the New York Avenue Church of Christ. The ones from Highland View School came down to where Highland View Church of Christ is now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember a big gate opening ceremony in March 1949?
MR. LOVE: Yes, I do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about that?
MR. LOVE: I remember they had the movie stars and the good-looking gal in a convertible and the pictures that they had in the paper. A lot of us – we couldn’t see anything, so we climbed up on that guard shack that was out there at the East end of town. We climbed up on top of that guard shack so we could see things.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you see?
MR. LOVE: We got to see the movie stars and all the parade came through and a lot of photographs.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned to me about skating on a float. Tell me about that.
MR. LOVE: I always love to roller skate. As soon as they built that skating rink down on the West end, Lacey Myers was the one who owned the thing. He hired a professional teacher – Art Champa out of Kentucky to come down here and teach the kids how to skate. So he held classes down there. Every week we would go to skating class, and he would teach us all the dance steps. All of us had partners that we would skate with. Then they had a parade. Lacey said, “We will have a float in that parade.” They had a flatbed truck with a flatbed on it, and they had it decorated. We got up on the flatbed, and we would skate around on that flatbed truck. I think we had a little vest or something that had a skating rink advertisement on the back.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was a skating rink located?
MR. LOVE: Down on Robertsville. I’m not sure what the street is.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In the Jefferson area?
MR. LOVE: Yes. Way down in the Jefferson end.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever go to the atomic museum?
MR. LOVE: That was in Jefferson?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Actually was across the street from the skating rink. It was a cafeteria and later became the American Museum of Atomic Energy.
MR. LOVE: Was that where the bus terminal was?
MR. HUNNICUTT: No, the bus terminal was a little further north.
MR. LOVE: I remember they had a bus terminal down there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It was a whole shopping center.
MR. LOVE: The shopping center was on the left. At the bus terminal was on the right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall visiting there?
MR. LOVE: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But that was in a place that you normally went?
MR. LOVE: No. When I was living on Hamilton Circle during the summer, I normally had to work during the summer. They had it right here in Grove Center – they had Sutton’s Sporting Goods. I worked down there during the summer in that sporting goods shop.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You were a salesperson?
MR. LOVE: A salesperson, yes. I was a fisherman, and I knew all the reels and all the plugs. They would come in there, and I would sell them fishing tackle.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember when people were trying to go out and get liquor back in the early days?
MR. LOVE: No, I was never one to drink, so I never had that problem. I do remember one thing. While I was in high school, right outside the gate some guy had a trailer; and you could go through the gate and pull over to his trailer and he would hand you out to the window a bottle. Some of my boys went up there one time while we were in high school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: They didn’t care how old you were?
MR. LOVE: No. As long as you had the money, they would pass it right out the window.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you started dating in high school, did you have dating rules, were your parents strict on you?
MR. LOVE: No, not too much. They pretty well trusted me. When I was dating, I was dating a good friend of mine’s sister. When I came back from college – I went to David Lipscomb College in Nashville. I had to ride the bus down there. It would take about seven hours to go from Oak Ridge to Nashville – 70 and 70 S and 70 N. and 70 S. I came back on the weekend. On Sunday night, I went to church at the Highland View School. My brother and I were together. We walked into the gymnasium. A little girl on the back row turned around and smiled. I told my brother, “I’m going to have a date with that girl before I leave.” Sure enough, I did; and that’s the one I been married to for 60 years.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was her name?
MR. LOVE: Her name was Lorena Hicks. Her mom and dad went to church right there, and she and her brothers. I’ve known her since she was just a little bitty kid. She was in my mother’s and brother’s Sunday school class. But that was the first time she ever caught my eye. She was only 13.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did she ever come to Oak Ridge in the early days, too?
MR. LOVE: Yes, she came here probably 1944 or 1945. They lived up on Holston Lane off Hillside.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you remember her in school any?
MR. LOVE: No, I just remember that – meeting her in their church.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you go on dates?
MR. LOVE: Well, normally the drive-in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What drive-in?
MR. LOVE: The one there on – I guess it’s Illinois Avenue. I guess that was the only one here in town – the Skyway Drive-In.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about going to a drive-in. What’s that like?
MR. LOVE: That was great fun. We doubled dated. I don’t know that they would trust us to go out just by ourselves, but we normally double dated. We would get in there and park and watch the movie. At the intermission you would go get the popcorn and drinks.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you hear the movie?
MR. LOVE: They had little speaker boxes that you hang on the window frame. You turn the volume up or down.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what it cost to get in the drive-in?
MR. LOVE: No, I have no idea – probably 25 or 30 cents maybe.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have a car? Or was this your dad’s car?
MR. LOVE: My dad’s car.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did he let you use the car very often for dating?
MR. LOVE: Yeah, about any time I wanted the car he would let me use it after I got my driver’s license and everything.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you met your wife to be, and you had been dating. When did you get married?
MR. LOVE: In 1952 – August 1952.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In Oak Ridge?
MR. LOVE: No, she was only 15. So we had to go to Ringold, Georgia. But her parents were with us. They knew me real well from church. I went to UT, and I was taking forestry. During the summer, UT arranged for forestry students to go out west to work. So I got a job in Idaho. I went as soon as school was out in the spring. I caught a bus and rode all the way to Idaho on a Greyhound bus. I got up there in a little town called Koosky, Idaho. The ranger met me there in Koosky. I worked there all summer. I wrote Lorena a letter and said, “Will you marry me?” She said, “Yes.” I came back at the end of July, and in August we got married.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What year was that?
MR. LOVE: 1952.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned riding the bus to Nashville to school. Where did you catch the bus?
MR. LOVE: I don’t really remember. I think maybe they had a place to stop up there near Jackson Square at the terminal off the Turnpike.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The Central bus station?
MR. LOVE: Yeah. Then we would leave from there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Speaking of buses, do you recall what a cattle car look like?
MR. LOVE: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now that you’ve gotten married, where was your first home?
MR. LOVE: We got a little apartment – first we moved to my parents’ home in Paducah, Kentucky. We lived there for just a few months. I worked out there at the plant. It was the atomic energy plant. So I worked out there at the welder’s training shop as a clerk. Then I came back to Oak Ridge. We got a little apartment over in Knoxville on Fifth Avenue. I got a job at Royal Jewelers as the jewelry repair man apprentice. I think I made $30 a week, and then they took taxes out of that. We didn’t have a lot of money. It was kind of tough for a while, and I put in an application to Oak Ridge. I was hired in in 1953 in February.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall where you went to put the application in?
MR. LOVE: No, I think it was somewhere Downtown. There were some offices Downtown up near Jackson Square along the Turnpike. I think that’s where we put our application in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How long after you put your application in before they hired you?
MR. LOVE: It wasn’t very long. I think it was a couple months. Then I went to work in February, and then in September I was drafted. I went to work at K-25. Yes, I was a junior draftsman. That’s what I was hired in as. When I first went in, back where the administration building was at K-25, the first wing was all open. There weren’t any compartments in or anything. It was one long open – with a bunch of drafting tables, just back to back. That’s where we were – and fans were up on the posts. Those posts held the ceiling up. They had electric fans up there blowing, no air-conditioning of course. That’s where I first started. I worked there and went down to K-1401 and work down there under Ben Martin in the basement. Then I got drafted.
MR. HUNNICUTT: This Ben Martin is of the same Ben Martin you had in high school?
MR. LOVE: No, this was another Ben Martin.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mechanical drawing course you took in high school help you?
MR. LOVE: Yes, it did. I had drawing in high school, and that help me. Then when I was going to UT, I was in pre-forestry, so we had some drawing classes in that. We would have to plot food plots in trees. So I had some drawing there that helped me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let’s go back a little bit. Did you ever have to go to the Oak Ridge Hospital and visit those folks for any particular reason?
MR. LOVE: I don’t ever remember going to the Oak Ridge Hospital.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about doctors? Do you recall doctors making home visits to the house?
MR. LOVE: Not here, no.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Your mother pretty much took care of all the doctoring?
MR. LOVE: Yeah, we just didn’t get much doctoring.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You were starting to work at K-25, and tell me how you got back and forth to work.
MR. LOVE: We carpooled. We were living on [inaudible] and Knoxville at the time. There were some people that lived there not too far from me that I found out about, so I got in the carpool with them and we carpooled back and forth. The fact is I rode in their carpool. I just had to pay them so much because I didn’t have a car at the time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: At that time, was your wife working?
MR. LOVE: She worked a little while in a jewelry store, but I don’t think she was working at that time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Then did you move to Oak Ridge later?
MR. LOVE: Yes, we did. After I got out of the Army, I was in the Army from 1953 to 1955 – I was in it for two years. I got in the Counterintelligence Corps. I went to Baltimore for my schooling, and she went up with me. It was the first time she had been in a big city like that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you live when you came to Oak Ridge after you married?
MR. LOVE: We came back to Oak Ridge, and we moved back in on Hamilton Circle – on the other end of Hamilton Circle, on the west end of Hamilton Circle.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were you renting?
MR. LOVE: Yes. It was a duplex. We had one end, and the owners had the other end.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do remember how much the rent was?
MR. LOVE: I don’t have any idea. I know when I got my job at Oak Ridge, we felt like we were rich. It was so much more than what I was making at the jewelry [store].
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were you still carpooling to work when you lived in Oak Ridge?
MR. LOVE: When I came back from the Army, we bought a car while I was in the Army. We came back to Oak Ridge, and then I had a car. We did carpool. I was in a carpool, but I had a car to drive, too. We just kind of swapped out.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you work shift work?
MR. LOVE: No, it was all during the day. I was never on any shift work.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the hours?
MR. LOVE: Normally, it was about 8 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. or something like that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was a barricade on the West End of the Turnpike that you had to go through in those days to go to work?
MR. LOVE: Not that I – that had already closed, and that gate was not in operation then. That was 1955.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you have children?
MR. LOVE: Yes, I have two – a son born in 1956, and a daughter that was born in 1960.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What are their names?
MR. LOVE: Michael Ray Love born in 1956. And Karen Kay Love-Dodgin born who lives up on Douglas Lake.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your children go through the Oak Ridge school system?
MR. LOVE: Yes, they did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Can you recall whether or not their schooling was any better than your schooling when you went through the school system?
MR. LOVE: I remember when my daughter started in the school. She was in the first class that had preschool. That was right after integration started in Oak Ridge. She had a lot of little black friends who were in the same class with her, and one little girl kept feeling her hair. I remember that. We took the classes called Head Start. That Head Start class – we had a boat, a 16 foot runabout. So we took them out to Carbide Park and took all the little kids with lifejackets and everything, and took them for a boat ride. It was the first time they had ever been in a boat, so they really enjoyed that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you and your wife have a lot of outside activities outside the home that you did together?
MR. LOVE: We both enjoyed archery. I did more than she did. I finally talked her into start shooting. We got her a bow and she started shooting archery, too. She liked to bowl. She was a very good bowler. She was in a women’s bowling league here in Oak Ridge. But then she started shooting archery with me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was that held?
MR. LOVE: Oak Ridge Sportsmen’s Club. I was one of the original members that help them build that first archery course out there at the Sportsmen’s Club, and later became a member of the sportsmen board of directors – since I was the president of the Oak Ridge Archery Club for a time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When did you move out of Oak Ridge to your present location?
MR. LOVE: I think we moved out of here about 1965 to Knoxville.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Why did you move out of Oak Ridge?
MR. LOVE: Well, the first thing – we were trying to buy a house down in East Village. Remember when the houses – they were to put those up and give you a refrigerator and a washing machine and all this if you bought one of the houses. We applied for one, and moved into it for a while. And then they said, “Well, this doesn’t work.” They were going to take our appliances away so we decided we would just move out and moved to Knoxville.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You lived over there at your present address since that day?
MR. LOVE: Yes. Since that time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Can you think of anything else that we haven’t talked about that you would like to talk about?
MR. LOVE: No, it was just a unique place for a young kid to come in here at 11 years old and have all the excitement and everything and things that were going on. I had lived on a farm as a young kid, and so coming from a farm background in a little town in Rogers, Arkansas, into a thriving place like this and all the excitement was just unique. There were many things for us to do – building the tree houses.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you think your education and the Oak Ridge school system was good, medium, or great?
MR. LOVE: I had excellent teachers here. I was just really, really fortunate to have really good teachers. I think they went around and found some of the best teachers in the country to bring here. I think they were probably making more money here. I was very happy with that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Jerry, it’s been my pleasure to interview you. I know your oral history will be of value to Oak Ridge Oral History. I thank you very much for your time.
MR. LOVE: Don, I appreciate meeting you, and I hope this hasn’t been too boring. My memory just isn’t as good as it used to be. A lot of these things that escape recall.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[Editor’s Note: This transcript has been edited at Mr. Love’s request. The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged.]

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ORAL HISTORY OF JERRY LOVE
Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt
Filmed by BBB Communications, LLC.
November 13, 2012
MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History. The date is November 13, 2012. I am Don Hunnicutt in the studio of BBB Communications, LLC., 170 Robertsville Road, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to take an oral history from Jerry Love, 713 Elk Mound Road, Knoxville, Tennessee, about living in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Jerry, please state your full name, place of birth, and date.
MR. LOVE: Jerry Love, born in Rogers, Arkansas, September 18, 1931.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall your father’s place of birth and date?
MR. LOVE: My father was born in southern Arkansas – Heber Springs, Arkansas. He was born around 1903.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was his name?
MR. LOVE: Jess Love.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about your mom’s place of birth and her maiden name?
MR. LOVE: Margaret Hain. She was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her family had just immigrated, and they had so many kids – her mother died when she was five, and her father put the children up for adoption. They put them on an orphan train out of Brooklyn, New York, that came down through the South, and came to Rogers, Arkansas, and the Elders adopted her. Her sister Marion was also adopted by another family, there in Rogers, Arkansas.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your father’s school history?
MR. LOVE: My father probably only went to about the fifth grade. He had to work to help support his sister and her kids.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what type of work he did?
MR. LOVE: Back then, he was working on a plantation down there in southern Arkansas. He was a mule skinner, I think. He took care of the mules.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mom?
MR. LOVE: Mother, after the family adopted her, they were fairly well off. She went to a business college.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did your father meet your mother?
MR. LOVE: There in Rogers, Arkansas.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were they married in Rogers?
MR. LOVE: Yeah. They were married there in Rogers, Arkansas.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you have any brothers and sisters?
MR. LOVE: I have one brother who is four years younger, Bill Love. He lives in Fort Myers, Florida.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about your schooling in Arkansas.
MR. LOVE: I went from the first, second, and third grade in Rogers. Then we moved to Paducah, Kentucky. I went through the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade at Paducah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your dress like when you went to school? What type of clothes did you wear?
MR. LOVE: I wore knickers with the socks, and I hated those things. You would start running, and the knickers would always fall down. But Mom always had me in knickers.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what type of classes you had when you were in school in Kentucky?
MR. LOVE: It was just regular grade school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Reading, writing, and arithmetic?
MR. LOVE: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How come your family came to Oak Ridge? What was the reason for that?
MR. LOVE: My dad was working there in Paducah, Kentucky, at the Kentucky Ordinance Works, which is now the atomic plant out there. The neighbor across the street from us was working with him, and they heard about a project starting in Tennessee. So in 1942, they came to get a job in Oak Ridge. They did, but they had to live in Knoxville. They rented some rooms in Knoxville, and they commuted back-and-forth. That was the fall of 1942. Then after school was out in 1942, then we came, Mother, and my brother and I.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you get to Oak Ridge?
MR. LOVE: Dad came home. He had a car, so he came home and got us. We packed what little bit of stuff we had, and came to Oak Ridge. There wasn’t any place to live here in Oak Ridge. They didn’t have all the trailers set up yet. So we lived in a little place down in Oliver Springs – an upstairs apartment. I guess we were there for about maybe two months in the spring of 1943. Then the friends that had come here with him found a motel there between Harriman and Wartburg called the Hilltop Motel. They had about six or seven cabins, so they just rented all of them and we filled all the cabins. We spent most of the summer there. And we finally got a trailer in section 10 down near Midtown across from where the high school is now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let me go back and maybe correct your dates. Maybe it was 1942 and 1943?
MR. LOVE: Yes, I’m sorry.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s quite all right. Now, you are living in a trailer camp, section 10. Where was that located?
MR. LOVE: Right across where the high school is now, just about three sections down from Midtown – west of Midtown.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was Midtown located?
MR. LOVE: Just about across the street from where Oak Ridge High School is now – across the [Oak Ridge] Turnpike.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of job did your father have?
MR. LOVE: He came here. He was a carpenter. All the guys that came with them were carpenters. His first job was with Stone-Webster. They were building the building that housed the calutrons.
MR. HUNNICUTT: At Y-12?
MR. LOVE: Y-12, yes. Mother got a job there, and she worked in the vault downstairs where they had the precious metals. They would lock her in in the morning and then let her out at night. She would sign precious metals out. They would sign for it, and she would hand it out through a window.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How old were you when you came to Oak Ridge?
MR. LOVE: I was 11 years old.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How old was your brother?
MR. LOVE: He was four years younger, so eight or nine.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Who took care of you guys while your parents were working?
MR. LOVE: We were latchkeys. We took care of ourselves.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they work shift work?
MR. LOVE: I don’t think so. No, I think it was all day work.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Both gone at the same time?
MR. LOVE: Yes. Both were gone at the same time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you ever recall your parents talking about their jobs or what they did?
MR. LOVE: No, I just remembered Dad said that they worked – he was in a building that had a big magnet. I think this was probably afterward, not while he was working there. But afterward he told us that that big magnet there, he said that when they walked into the building, their nail aprons would stand straight out that magnet was so strong. He said you could let a nail go and – bing – it would go straight to that magnet and just stand straight out.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mom? Did she ever talk about her work?
MR. LOVE: No, she just said that she was locked in downstairs in the vault where they had the precious metals. Most of the United States silver was down there. Of course, it was probably in that calutron. They had other precious metals down there. They used some for experimental work, I guess.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How long did your father work here in Oak Ridge?
MR. LOVE: He worked until I was going to UT [University of Tennessee]. I graduated in 1949 from Oak Ridge High School. It was probably right after 1949 that he left and move back to Paducah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you stayed behind?
MR. LOVE: I stayed here.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your brother? Did he stay?
MR. LOVE: He went with them to Paducah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother work that long as well?
MR. LOVE: I believe she did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The same job?
MR. LOVE: I’m not sure, but she had several. No, she didn’t have the same job. She worked different jobs, and I’m not sure what all they were.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did they get back and forth to work?
MR. LOVE: They had a car. They drove.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about living in the trailer at section 10.
MR. LOVE: When we first moved there, the trailers were just along the Turnpike; and the roads went into the trailer court and were perpendicular to the Turnpike. They ended at a ditch that they had dug, and the ditch was probably eight feet wide and about five or six feet deep to take care of a creek that ran down there – to take care of the drainage. That was our playground. We were latchkey kids, and so we would go down there and play in that creek all day long.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where were you going to school at that time?
MR. LOVE: When I first got here it was middle of the summer, we moved then from the trailer in the fall. We got a house at 111 Hamilton Circle. School didn’t start until late that first year. It was down where Robertsville Junior High School is now. They were finishing the building so we could get into school. I don’t think it started until about November that first year. I was there in the seventh grade at Robertsville.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Go back to the trailer and describe what it looked like inside.
MR. LOVE: I’ve seen pictures of them, but I don’t remember. The only thing I do remember is it didn’t have any water. It had a little thing there, but you had about a five gallon flat can that they would fill up and bring it in and sat up there, and you had a little bit of water that you could use out of that can. Push a button and you would get water into the sink. I think it’s just drained onto the ground into the gravel.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about restroom?
MR. LOVE: Of course they had the big bathhouse. It was built like an Army barracks type thing. All the things were along one wall and commodes on another, and around the next was a shower room with showers all along the wall. The most memorable thing for a little kid – at least for me – was going in there and taking a shower with all those hairy-backed men. I’ve never seen so many hairy-backed men.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How was the trailer heated?
MR. LOVE: That is a good one. I don’t really remember – probably oil. When we got on Hamilton Circle, they had the coal boxes. Up the wooden sidewalk was the big coal box they would come by and fill up.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That house on Hamilton Circle – what type of house was it?
MR. LOVE: TDU.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned about the coal boxes. Do you recall how often they were filled up or filling them up?
MR. LOVE: No, I don’t remember. They would just come by with the big truck and they would have a lid on the top, and they just filled the bins up. It had a little door at the bottom that you could open up and scoop it out and put it in the scuttle and take it down to the house.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you see different living in the TDU and then living in the trailer?
MR. LOVE: Well, we weren’t in the trailer really all that long – maybe a month or so. I don’t really recall a whole lot about the trailer. The main thing was that when we got the TDU, we had indoor plumbing. That was the main thing. We didn’t have to go to the bathhouse. The main thing about the bathhouse I remember was that it had a bulletin board. That was where everybody got their information. Mother, being a real religious person, went to the bulletin board and posted a notice that anybody that was a member of the Church of Christ call her number. She had a number at work where they could call her. So through that, several people got in touch with her. Of course, she posted them on all the bulletin boards in all the trailer courts down through there. Several people called her, and at the first meeting then – there were seven members of the Church of Christ that met in Grove Center in a little white church.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall where the church was located?
MR. LOVE: It’s about where the Oak Ridge Alliance Church is right now. They must’ve torn down the old building and built that new church there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Near the corner of Robertsville and the Turnpike there?
MR. LOVE: Yes
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s Robertsville and Raleigh Road.
MR. LOVE: It was right past there where that church is on the right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Back to the TDU, how many bedrooms were in there?
MR. LOVE: I think there were two.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you share a bedroom?
MR. LOVE: With my brother.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall having your mother wash clothes in those days?
MR. LOVE: Mother had a washing machine that she could roll over to the sink in the kitchen. We had clothes lines behind the house.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What school did you attend when you were living on Hamilton Circle?
MR. LOVE: The first year I went down to Robertsville. That was in the seventh grade. In the eighth grade, they had a new school open at the top of Highland Avenue and West Outer Drive, Highland View School.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let’s go back to the old Robertsville School. Was there anything unique about that school?
MR. LOVE: It was all brand-new with brand-new seats and everything. The new building part – of course, we used the old gym, the old Robertsville gym that was here before the war.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Had they torn down the old Robertsville School building itself?
MR. LOVE: No, it was still here then. I think there were a few classes in it. I didn’t have any there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember seeing any fire escape tubes on the outside of that old building?
MR. LOVE: No. I don’t.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now you are attending Highland View School. Did you walk to school?
MR. LOVE: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How far was that?
MR. LOVE: It’s probably maybe half a mile or so from Hamilton Circle, up Highland Avenue, up to West Outer Drive. It was about half a mile.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were some of the classes you had in Highland View School?
MR. LOVE: In Highland View, I was in the eighth grade. We just had a homeroom teacher, and we were all in that one room for all of our classes – arithmetic, English, spelling.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have gym class?
MR. LOVE: Yes, they had a nice gym. In fact, that gymnasium then – the Church of Christ met there on Sundays. They allowed the churches to meet in some of the gyms.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they have a playground outside for you to play on?
MR. LOVE: Yes, they did. They had a nice playground.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember your teacher’s name?
MR. LOVE: Ms. Henson.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me what you remember about going to school in Arkansas and then Oak Ridge – what the difference was at this point.
MR. LOVE: In Arkansas, of course I only went to the third grade. I remember the first two teachers – Miss Woods and Miss Price. They were old maids that had their hair in a bun. Then in third grade we got a beauty. She was a young teacher right out of college, and all the boys just fell in love with her. Her name was Carolyn Collins.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me what you did in the summertime when you lived on Hamilton Circle.
MR. LOVE: That was a boy’s dreamland up there on Hamilton Circle. We had the big fields down below us down there, where we went down and we could play football and stuff and that big field between Hamilton Circle and the high school. It was pretty flat so we would play football. The main thing was building tree houses. The woods right across from Hamilton Circle, right across Hillside Road. There were some big woods with a lot of the trees. They were building all those big apartments up there. There were all kinds of piles of lumber and kegs of nails, and all of us had a hammer. Our summers were spent building treehouses and hunting squirrels and rabbits.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What you recall about the swimming pool there below Hamilton Circle?
MR. LOVE: When we first got here, that was just kind of a lake that was kind of grown-up. We didn’t go from the trailer camp – I went over there a few times, but I didn’t spend much time down there. When I got up on Hamilton Circle, they had started cleaning it up. There was an old log cabin right next to the spring. The spring is on the west end of the lake. The cabin was right there next to the spring. We used that as a scout cabin. They started a scout troop. They actually started the scout troop – I was 11 when I came here, and I turned 12 in September of that year when I was still in the trailer court. I joined a troop that met there right next to Midtown. They had one of the hutments, they put it there. We kept our equipment, and that is where we met. Then we moved to Hamilton Circle, where I would have to walk from Hamilton Circle across the field where the high school is and over to Midtown for the scout meetings. Then they moved the scout meetings then down to that little log cabin on the lake where the swimming pool is.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the scout number?
MR. LOVE: No, I sure don’t.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Someone mentioned to me some time ago that that was called a fish camp, where the swimming pool is. Did you ever hear that name?
MR. LOVE: No, I didn’t.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But when it first became a swimming pool, describe what it looked like.
MR. LOVE: First, they came in and put sand on the Hamilton Circle side of the lake. They put sand in there and cleaned the lake out. You would go down there and swim and lay in the sand, and a lot of the men and women – they were in the military and living in dormitories. They would come down there and lay on the beach and swim. Of course, we would too. We would go down there and swim.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they charge you for getting in?
MR. LOVE: I think initially they didn’t, but then I think they did start charging. Then it was just another year or so when they finally started to go ahead and put in the concrete pool.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Wasn’t fenced in when you first started attending?
MR. LOVE: No, I don’t think so. They later fenced it in I think when they put the sand in. Then they started charging. They concreted the pool when they made the big pool that’s there now. They still use the water from that spring. We would go down to take swimming lessons, and they were always early in the morning. The water coming out of that spring was nice and cold, and we would all turn blue when we were down there taking swimming lessons. But that’s where we learned to swim.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned earlier about that field where the high school is – something happened in that field. Do you want to tell me again what it is?
MR. LOVE: Our house set up on the hill there on Hamilton Circle. We could see that entire field down there below us. It was full of rabbits. On Sunday afternoon, a lot of the men from all over across the trailer camp where all the hutments were and a lot of the bachelors stayed and workers – they would come down there and ring that field. It had drivers and they would start driving from one end to the other, and they had these big long sticks. They would kill the rabbits as they ran toward them. On Sunday afternoon, we would sit up there and watch them herd rabbits.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you move – or did you move from Hamilton Circle?
MR. LOVE: Yes, we moved from Hamilton Circle over to Woodland on Purdue Avenue.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the number?
MR. LOVE: No, I sure don’t.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was different about the house you lived in Woodland versus the one on Hamilton Circle?
MR. LOVE: Well, it was a concrete block house. It had a little bit more room. It was right on the corner – I forget the names of the road now, but we had a corner house that was very nice.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many bedrooms was it?
MR. LOVE: I think it was maybe a three-bedroom.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall how the house was heated?
MR. LOVE: No, I don’t. It may have been electric heating because I know we didn’t have any coal boxes outside.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you attend Woodland Elementary School?
MR. LOVE: No. By that time I was in high school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you get to the high school from Woodland?
MR. LOVE: Actually, to tell you the truth, I started in high school when we were still on Hamilton Circle. We moved to Woodland in 1950 after I graduated from high school in 1949.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were the houses and the roads finished when you move to Woodland?
MR. LOVE: Yes, Woodland was really a nice development. They had pretty well finished it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about your experience in the Oak Ridge High School. Where was a high school located when you attended?
MR. LOVE: It’s where Blankenship Field is now up on the hill.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s a pretty good piece from Woodland. Did you walk?
MR. LOVE: No, I was still on Hamilton Circle at the time when I first started there. So sometimes I would walk, but most of the time we would ride a bus.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about riding the bus.
MR. LOVE: We had those tokens where you would get so many tokens. I don’t know how much they were. We would get tokens and use the tokens to ride the bus to Jackson Square, and get off there at the little terminal route across from where a post office was. Then we would walk up the hill. A lot of the times we would just walk all the way home.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall some of the classes you took when you went to the high school?
MR. LOVE: I had geometry. I had Miss Benson for geometry class. Then our shop teacher – I took shop one year. He was also the coach of the rifle team. I can’t remember his name. He was coach of the rifle team, and I was president of the Rifle Club. He would take us out to Oak Ridge Sportsmans Club. They bought these good match heavy barrel single shot rifles, .22 target rifles – for the rifle club. They would take us out there as a group. There were probably eight or 10 people, and we would go out there and shoot.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were some of the other classes that you took?
MR. LOVE: I took of course English.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were you active in any of the sports in high school?
MR. LOVE: Just the Rifle Club mainly. I was mainly interested in outdoor sports. We didn’t start shooting archery – didn’t have any archery at that time. I started archery later.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I remember you telling me that earlier. Do you recall who the physical education teacher was at the high school?
MR. LOVE: Yes, Ben Martin. He was a dandy. He was a fine gentleman.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you like about him?
MR. LOVE: He was just the finest gentlemen. I was just a little scrawny thing. I’m hauling all this now, but I was just a little scrawny kid. I was good at doing chin-ups. I could climb the rope all the way to the top of the gym and back down without using my feet and everything, so I had good arm strength because I was so light. We had a competition – the pentathlon – against Knoxville High School. He chose me to do chin-ups. I went over there with a group. Some did push-ups and other things, jumps. I did the chin-ups for the team.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you win?
MR. LOVE: No, I came in second.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many chin-ups you recall you did?
MR. LOVE: I could do one more than anybody else. That’s what I always said. I could normally do 16 or 18 chin-ups.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever have a paper route when you’re growing up?
MR. LOVE: Yes, I did. I had a paper route when we live down there in the trailers. I delivered papers. They would come down to dump them off down there at Midtown. We would pick up our bundle, and my route was over there across the road in sections 21 or something, 22, and 23 – on the Oak Ridge High School side of the Turnpike.
MR. HUNNICUTT: More trailers?
MR. LOVE: Yeah, it was all trailers.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me what you remember about Midtown. You referred to it as a shopping center.
MR. LOVE: It was just a big old roof building. It had a little service station right there next to it. It had a little hutment there next to it that we uses for the scout cabin. That’s where I first started. Then I remembered the line where they would line up to get cigarettes. My dad smoked, but my mama didn’t, but she would get in line for him – stand in line to get him some cigarettes, too.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Jerry, did you ever play at the playgrounds during the summertime?
MR. LOVE: Yes. They had the best organized and the finest group of young people that volunteered to man those playgrounds. I have never seen anything like it before. They had playgrounds up at Highland View School. They had the one that was closest to us on Hamilton Circle. It was right about where the end of the high school is right now, the west end. There was a big tree, and they set up a group of people that would come there – young people. They had games for us to play, things to color, and books to read. They set up there every summer under that tree, we would go down there. That’s one of the things I remember about that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Back in the early days, there were boardwalks around town. Tell me what you remember about the boardwalks.
MR. LOVE: It was the best place to kill rabbits. The boardwalks were everywhere, up from my house, up to our coal box and then along the main streets. There were all these boardwalks. Of course meat was so scarce, we didn’t have a lot of meat back then. It was rationed. We loved rabbit and squirrels. We had a good tree dog, and he would tree squirrels; but he would also run the rabbits and run them underneath the boardwalks. Then he would run down the boardwalk and whenever he got over the rabbit, he would start sniffing, and we would go up there. We carried a long bladed hunting knife, and we would stick it down through the crack in the boardwalk and kill the rabbit – pull them out from underneath there and skin him and bring him home to eat. We had a lot of rabbit and squirrel that year.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have a bicycle when you were growing up?
MR. LOVE: I sure did. When I was on Hamilton Circle, I had a bicycle and we rode them everywhere. My main bunch of friends that I ran with in high school were near Cedar Hill School upon Outer Drive. So I would go up to meet my friend, W.S.
Everett, at the corner of West Outer Drive and Pennsylvania Avenue; and I would ride up the hill. We would ride out West Outer Drive to Cedar Hill School. That’s where we would play basketball and touch football in the season.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That was a pretty good ride from up the hill?
MR. LOVE: Yeah. But back then, there weren’t many cars. You would be scared to death to get out – you’d be scared in the car now, much less going up there on a bicycle. But we just didn’t have any traffic.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall where your mother did her shopping?
MR. LOVE: Most of the time I guess it was down at Midtown. And then when they built Grove Center, they were shops there in Grove Center. So when we were on Hamilton Circle, she would go down there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you go with her?
MR. LOVE: I was a never too much of a shopper. I don’t remember going with her shopping.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about movie theaters? Did you ever go to the theater?
MR. LOVE: At Grove Theater, yes. I sure did. Grove Theater came in down there here in Grove Center. So that’s where we went to the movie. Almost every weekend on Saturday we go to the movies.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember how much it cost?
MR. LOVE: I think it was probably about nine cents for a while, and then went up to 11 cents. I think that's about the price.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of movies did they show at the Grove Theater?
MR. LOVE: We saw all kinds of movies. The one that was most memorable to me was with Audie Murphy and Jane Russell in the “Outlaw”. It was the first movie that Jane Russell made.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about cartoons? Did they have cartoons on Saturday?
MR. LOVE: Yeah, normally they would have a cartoon movie and a cowboy movie.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was the Grove Theater the only one you attended?
MR. LOVE: No, there was one uptown in Jackson Square.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about that one?
MR. LOVE: I remember that we used to go up there – maybe that was before the Grove Theater opened. We would ride the bus up there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned that you got off the bus across from the post office in Jackson Square and walked up the hill to high school. Do you recall some of the other stores in Jackson Square? Did you stop at any of the other stores before or after school?
MR. LOVE: I remember there was a drugstore on the corner there up from the theater. I think there was a bowling alley down underneath on the other side of the theater. We went there sometimes and bowled a couple of times. But whenever they built the Grove Center, I worked down there setting pins the first week it was open.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do remember the name of that?
MR. LOVE: No, I don’t remember the name of it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It was the Oak Terrace.
MR. LOVE: They had a bowling alley, and several of us – you had to set the pins on pegs. They didn’t have the racks. When they first started – they even had one game they called ten pins or duck pins, they were where they had little pins. They threw a ball that didn’t have the holes in it. You had to set those little tin pins on those pegs. You would mash the lever on the floor, and the pins would come up. They had a hole in the bottom of the pins and they sat on those pegs. Then they would throw those balls, and they would come over the back of the backstop. They had a backstop, and you would get behind it and hide because sometimes those pins would come over. They stop the ten pins, but they still use those pegs for a while before they got the set machines then. They had the set machines and you would throw the big bowling pins in the rack, and you’d pull it down and it would and it set the hole 10 pins.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were setting the pins on the pegs, you push the lever and the pegs came up out of the floor?
MR. LOVE: Out of the floor. Yes. The lever was right on the edge. It dropped down. So you put the foot in there and mashed on the pins, and you set the pins on those pegs.
MR. HUNNICUTT: About what size was the bowling ball? About like cannonballs?
MR. LOVE: No, the bowling balls that they would use with the ten pin – were smaller. It was smaller than a bowling ball – I would say about half the size. Those guys could really hurl them. Then they started to use regular pins.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How much money did you make setting pins?
MR. LOVE: I think it was eight cents a line. If you could, there was a gap between two alleys so you could jump from one to the other. So if you are setting two lines, you could probably make a $1 or $1.50 a night setting pins.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the home milk deliveries?
MR. LOVE: No, I don’t remember that. I don’t remember us having milk delivered.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did I ask you before – did you have a paper route?
MR. LOVE: Yes, I did when I was in the trailer camp.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s right. Tell me how much papers cost in those days.
MR. LOVE: I don’t have any idea. That is so far gone.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do remember how much you made off your paper route?
MR. LOVE: I don’t. It was very minimal, just a little spending money.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember whether you had a personal ID badge?
MR. LOVE: Yes, I did. Everybody had to have a badge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was on the badge?
MR. LOVE: I think it had my picture and I don’t remember what else.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Maybe in ID number of some sort?
MR. LOVE: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the requirement on that badge? Did you have to wear it every time you went out of the house?
MR. LOVE: No, whenever you went out of the town. If you went outside of Oak Ridge through the gates, you had to have that to show and to get back in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your family have many people come and visit you while the city was gated?
MR. LOVE: No, none at all.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall times going out the gates and coming back in?
MR. LOVE: I think we went to Knoxville a couple times. Going to Sears Roebuck when it was over on Central Avenue – I think that was the big shopping spree of the year to get clothes for school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what transpired at the gate when you came back?
MR. LOVE: Mainly just look at your badge and checking you back in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I asked you about using the bus before, and you mentioned you rode to school the bus at times. Did you use the bus for other means of transportation around the city?
MR. LOVE: Yes, any time we wanted to go to uptown to Jackson Square, we would ride the bus. A lot of times we would just walk. But then we also used the bus to go fishing. They had a bus that left from the main terminal over on the Turnpike that went out to K-25, and we would ride that bus out to K-25 and get off at the Turnpike out there and walked down the railroad track to where the water came out from the cooling towers and fished in that stream.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And then catch the bus on the way back home?
MR. LOVE: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned to me one time about frog gigging. Tell me that story.
MR. LOVE: Past Robertsville School on Robertsville Road, just past Robertsville going west on Robertsville Road, on the same side as the school, there was a big swamp. There were a lot of frogs in it – bullfrogs. We decided that we were going to down there and go bullfrogs gigging. I made some gigs for me and my brother and a couple other kids that went with us. We went down there to go frog gigging. The mud was real deep, about half up to your calf in mud. My brother was behind me, and he gigged me in the back of my heel. Of course Mama didn’t want us going down there so I didn’t tell Mama anything about it. I got home at night and went to bed and woke up in the middle the night, and my leg was aching and I had to wake Mom up. I said, “Mama, Bill gigged me in the foot.” She said, “You were down there in the swamp, wasn’t you?” She looked and there was a red streak going up my leg. They didn’t take me to the doctor. She set me up there next to the sink and ran hot water in there, put Epson salts in there. I sat there with my foot in hot Epson salts, and the red streak finally went down my leg. They just didn’t take us to the doctor back in those days.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you go back to the swamp?
MR. LOVE: No, I didn’t go back anymore.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your family have a telephone?
MR. LOVE: When we got to – yes, we had one on Hamilton Circle.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were you on a party line?
MR. LOVE: Part of the time we were on a party line.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me how that party line worked.
MR. LOVE: Everybody could listen to everybody else. You had a certain ring, but what if it wasn’t your ring they could still pick up and listen.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you feel safe growing up in Oak Ridge?
MR. LOVE: I never had a worry in the world about anything in Oak Ridge. Back in those days even when I was in Arkansas or Paducah, we never lock the doors. We never thought anything about it. We would go to town when I lived in Paducah and walked maybe three miles to town and come back, and never think anything about it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about the people who were here in Oak Ridge? In all the neighborhoods you lived in, did everyone get along? How was that?
MR. LOVE: On Hamilton Circle, I had several young friends about my same age. We were the ones that hunted together and built the treehouses together. The people were just really, really nice. Of course I’ve always found people to be nice. I never met a really unfriendly person.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Even though they came from all different parts of the United States, they all blended together?
MR. LOVE: Yes. Our next door neighbors were from Michigan – Yankees. But we just love them, and they were great people. Of course most of our friends were members of the church. We were real church-oriented. So they were from all over, but everybody just blended in and we had a great bunch of friends.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned that the church met in Highland View School in the auditorium. Where did they meet after that?
MR. LOVE: They built the church down here next to the swimming pool, the Highland View Church of Christ.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall when they built the church?
MR. LOVE: No, I don’t remember. I think – I don’t remember what year they built that. I remember – did I talk about the church’s first meeting?
MR. HUNNICUTT: In the hutments?
MR. LOVE: No, in the little white building here in Grove Center.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes. And your mother had posted flyers on the bulletin board.
MR. LOVE: That’s where it kind of got started. Then they also started a Church of Christ over in Cedar Hill School. The group that met in that school finally established a church and built a building on New York Avenue. That’s the New York Avenue Church of Christ. The ones from Highland View School came down to where Highland View Church of Christ is now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember a big gate opening ceremony in March 1949?
MR. LOVE: Yes, I do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about that?
MR. LOVE: I remember they had the movie stars and the good-looking gal in a convertible and the pictures that they had in the paper. A lot of us – we couldn’t see anything, so we climbed up on that guard shack that was out there at the East end of town. We climbed up on top of that guard shack so we could see things.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you see?
MR. LOVE: We got to see the movie stars and all the parade came through and a lot of photographs.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned to me about skating on a float. Tell me about that.
MR. LOVE: I always love to roller skate. As soon as they built that skating rink down on the West end, Lacey Myers was the one who owned the thing. He hired a professional teacher – Art Champa out of Kentucky to come down here and teach the kids how to skate. So he held classes down there. Every week we would go to skating class, and he would teach us all the dance steps. All of us had partners that we would skate with. Then they had a parade. Lacey said, “We will have a float in that parade.” They had a flatbed truck with a flatbed on it, and they had it decorated. We got up on the flatbed, and we would skate around on that flatbed truck. I think we had a little vest or something that had a skating rink advertisement on the back.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was a skating rink located?
MR. LOVE: Down on Robertsville. I’m not sure what the street is.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In the Jefferson area?
MR. LOVE: Yes. Way down in the Jefferson end.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever go to the atomic museum?
MR. LOVE: That was in Jefferson?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Actually was across the street from the skating rink. It was a cafeteria and later became the American Museum of Atomic Energy.
MR. LOVE: Was that where the bus terminal was?
MR. HUNNICUTT: No, the bus terminal was a little further north.
MR. LOVE: I remember they had a bus terminal down there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It was a whole shopping center.
MR. LOVE: The shopping center was on the left. At the bus terminal was on the right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall visiting there?
MR. LOVE: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But that was in a place that you normally went?
MR. LOVE: No. When I was living on Hamilton Circle during the summer, I normally had to work during the summer. They had it right here in Grove Center – they had Sutton’s Sporting Goods. I worked down there during the summer in that sporting goods shop.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You were a salesperson?
MR. LOVE: A salesperson, yes. I was a fisherman, and I knew all the reels and all the plugs. They would come in there, and I would sell them fishing tackle.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember when people were trying to go out and get liquor back in the early days?
MR. LOVE: No, I was never one to drink, so I never had that problem. I do remember one thing. While I was in high school, right outside the gate some guy had a trailer; and you could go through the gate and pull over to his trailer and he would hand you out to the window a bottle. Some of my boys went up there one time while we were in high school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: They didn’t care how old you were?
MR. LOVE: No. As long as you had the money, they would pass it right out the window.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you started dating in high school, did you have dating rules, were your parents strict on you?
MR. LOVE: No, not too much. They pretty well trusted me. When I was dating, I was dating a good friend of mine’s sister. When I came back from college – I went to David Lipscomb College in Nashville. I had to ride the bus down there. It would take about seven hours to go from Oak Ridge to Nashville – 70 and 70 S and 70 N. and 70 S. I came back on the weekend. On Sunday night, I went to church at the Highland View School. My brother and I were together. We walked into the gymnasium. A little girl on the back row turned around and smiled. I told my brother, “I’m going to have a date with that girl before I leave.” Sure enough, I did; and that’s the one I been married to for 60 years.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was her name?
MR. LOVE: Her name was Lorena Hicks. Her mom and dad went to church right there, and she and her brothers. I’ve known her since she was just a little bitty kid. She was in my mother’s and brother’s Sunday school class. But that was the first time she ever caught my eye. She was only 13.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did she ever come to Oak Ridge in the early days, too?
MR. LOVE: Yes, she came here probably 1944 or 1945. They lived up on Holston Lane off Hillside.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you remember her in school any?
MR. LOVE: No, I just remember that – meeting her in their church.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you go on dates?
MR. LOVE: Well, normally the drive-in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What drive-in?
MR. LOVE: The one there on – I guess it’s Illinois Avenue. I guess that was the only one here in town – the Skyway Drive-In.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about going to a drive-in. What’s that like?
MR. LOVE: That was great fun. We doubled dated. I don’t know that they would trust us to go out just by ourselves, but we normally double dated. We would get in there and park and watch the movie. At the intermission you would go get the popcorn and drinks.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you hear the movie?
MR. LOVE: They had little speaker boxes that you hang on the window frame. You turn the volume up or down.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what it cost to get in the drive-in?
MR. LOVE: No, I have no idea – probably 25 or 30 cents maybe.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have a car? Or was this your dad’s car?
MR. LOVE: My dad’s car.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did he let you use the car very often for dating?
MR. LOVE: Yeah, about any time I wanted the car he would let me use it after I got my driver’s license and everything.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you met your wife to be, and you had been dating. When did you get married?
MR. LOVE: In 1952 – August 1952.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In Oak Ridge?
MR. LOVE: No, she was only 15. So we had to go to Ringold, Georgia. But her parents were with us. They knew me real well from church. I went to UT, and I was taking forestry. During the summer, UT arranged for forestry students to go out west to work. So I got a job in Idaho. I went as soon as school was out in the spring. I caught a bus and rode all the way to Idaho on a Greyhound bus. I got up there in a little town called Koosky, Idaho. The ranger met me there in Koosky. I worked there all summer. I wrote Lorena a letter and said, “Will you marry me?” She said, “Yes.” I came back at the end of July, and in August we got married.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What year was that?
MR. LOVE: 1952.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned riding the bus to Nashville to school. Where did you catch the bus?
MR. LOVE: I don’t really remember. I think maybe they had a place to stop up there near Jackson Square at the terminal off the Turnpike.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The Central bus station?
MR. LOVE: Yeah. Then we would leave from there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Speaking of buses, do you recall what a cattle car look like?
MR. LOVE: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now that you’ve gotten married, where was your first home?
MR. LOVE: We got a little apartment – first we moved to my parents’ home in Paducah, Kentucky. We lived there for just a few months. I worked out there at the plant. It was the atomic energy plant. So I worked out there at the welder’s training shop as a clerk. Then I came back to Oak Ridge. We got a little apartment over in Knoxville on Fifth Avenue. I got a job at Royal Jewelers as the jewelry repair man apprentice. I think I made $30 a week, and then they took taxes out of that. We didn’t have a lot of money. It was kind of tough for a while, and I put in an application to Oak Ridge. I was hired in in 1953 in February.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall where you went to put the application in?
MR. LOVE: No, I think it was somewhere Downtown. There were some offices Downtown up near Jackson Square along the Turnpike. I think that’s where we put our application in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How long after you put your application in before they hired you?
MR. LOVE: It wasn’t very long. I think it was a couple months. Then I went to work in February, and then in September I was drafted. I went to work at K-25. Yes, I was a junior draftsman. That’s what I was hired in as. When I first went in, back where the administration building was at K-25, the first wing was all open. There weren’t any compartments in or anything. It was one long open – with a bunch of drafting tables, just back to back. That’s where we were – and fans were up on the posts. Those posts held the ceiling up. They had electric fans up there blowing, no air-conditioning of course. That’s where I first started. I worked there and went down to K-1401 and work down there under Ben Martin in the basement. Then I got drafted.
MR. HUNNICUTT: This Ben Martin is of the same Ben Martin you had in high school?
MR. LOVE: No, this was another Ben Martin.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mechanical drawing course you took in high school help you?
MR. LOVE: Yes, it did. I had drawing in high school, and that help me. Then when I was going to UT, I was in pre-forestry, so we had some drawing classes in that. We would have to plot food plots in trees. So I had some drawing there that helped me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let’s go back a little bit. Did you ever have to go to the Oak Ridge Hospital and visit those folks for any particular reason?
MR. LOVE: I don’t ever remember going to the Oak Ridge Hospital.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about doctors? Do you recall doctors making home visits to the house?
MR. LOVE: Not here, no.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Your mother pretty much took care of all the doctoring?
MR. LOVE: Yeah, we just didn’t get much doctoring.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You were starting to work at K-25, and tell me how you got back and forth to work.
MR. LOVE: We carpooled. We were living on [inaudible] and Knoxville at the time. There were some people that lived there not too far from me that I found out about, so I got in the carpool with them and we carpooled back and forth. The fact is I rode in their carpool. I just had to pay them so much because I didn’t have a car at the time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: At that time, was your wife working?
MR. LOVE: She worked a little while in a jewelry store, but I don’t think she was working at that time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Then did you move to Oak Ridge later?
MR. LOVE: Yes, we did. After I got out of the Army, I was in the Army from 1953 to 1955 – I was in it for two years. I got in the Counterintelligence Corps. I went to Baltimore for my schooling, and she went up with me. It was the first time she had been in a big city like that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you live when you came to Oak Ridge after you married?
MR. LOVE: We came back to Oak Ridge, and we moved back in on Hamilton Circle – on the other end of Hamilton Circle, on the west end of Hamilton Circle.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were you renting?
MR. LOVE: Yes. It was a duplex. We had one end, and the owners had the other end.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do remember how much the rent was?
MR. LOVE: I don’t have any idea. I know when I got my job at Oak Ridge, we felt like we were rich. It was so much more than what I was making at the jewelry [store].
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were you still carpooling to work when you lived in Oak Ridge?
MR. LOVE: When I came back from the Army, we bought a car while I was in the Army. We came back to Oak Ridge, and then I had a car. We did carpool. I was in a carpool, but I had a car to drive, too. We just kind of swapped out.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you work shift work?
MR. LOVE: No, it was all during the day. I was never on any shift work.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the hours?
MR. LOVE: Normally, it was about 8 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. or something like that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was a barricade on the West End of the Turnpike that you had to go through in those days to go to work?
MR. LOVE: Not that I – that had already closed, and that gate was not in operation then. That was 1955.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you have children?
MR. LOVE: Yes, I have two – a son born in 1956, and a daughter that was born in 1960.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What are their names?
MR. LOVE: Michael Ray Love born in 1956. And Karen Kay Love-Dodgin born who lives up on Douglas Lake.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your children go through the Oak Ridge school system?
MR. LOVE: Yes, they did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Can you recall whether or not their schooling was any better than your schooling when you went through the school system?
MR. LOVE: I remember when my daughter started in the school. She was in the first class that had preschool. That was right after integration started in Oak Ridge. She had a lot of little black friends who were in the same class with her, and one little girl kept feeling her hair. I remember that. We took the classes called Head Start. That Head Start class – we had a boat, a 16 foot runabout. So we took them out to Carbide Park and took all the little kids with lifejackets and everything, and took them for a boat ride. It was the first time they had ever been in a boat, so they really enjoyed that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you and your wife have a lot of outside activities outside the home that you did together?
MR. LOVE: We both enjoyed archery. I did more than she did. I finally talked her into start shooting. We got her a bow and she started shooting archery, too. She liked to bowl. She was a very good bowler. She was in a women’s bowling league here in Oak Ridge. But then she started shooting archery with me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was that held?
MR. LOVE: Oak Ridge Sportsmen’s Club. I was one of the original members that help them build that first archery course out there at the Sportsmen’s Club, and later became a member of the sportsmen board of directors – since I was the president of the Oak Ridge Archery Club for a time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When did you move out of Oak Ridge to your present location?
MR. LOVE: I think we moved out of here about 1965 to Knoxville.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Why did you move out of Oak Ridge?
MR. LOVE: Well, the first thing – we were trying to buy a house down in East Village. Remember when the houses – they were to put those up and give you a refrigerator and a washing machine and all this if you bought one of the houses. We applied for one, and moved into it for a while. And then they said, “Well, this doesn’t work.” They were going to take our appliances away so we decided we would just move out and moved to Knoxville.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You lived over there at your present address since that day?
MR. LOVE: Yes. Since that time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Can you think of anything else that we haven’t talked about that you would like to talk about?
MR. LOVE: No, it was just a unique place for a young kid to come in here at 11 years old and have all the excitement and everything and things that were going on. I had lived on a farm as a young kid, and so coming from a farm background in a little town in Rogers, Arkansas, into a thriving place like this and all the excitement was just unique. There were many things for us to do – building the tree houses.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you think your education and the Oak Ridge school system was good, medium, or great?
MR. LOVE: I had excellent teachers here. I was just really, really fortunate to have really good teachers. I think they went around and found some of the best teachers in the country to bring here. I think they were probably making more money here. I was very happy with that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Jerry, it’s been my pleasure to interview you. I know your oral history will be of value to Oak Ridge Oral History. I thank you very much for your time.
MR. LOVE: Don, I appreciate meeting you, and I hope this hasn’t been too boring. My memory just isn’t as good as it used to be. A lot of these things that escape recall.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[Editor’s Note: This transcript has been edited at Mr. Love’s request. The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged.]